Increasing Range

Wi-Fi in general has limited range, in particular on mobile telephones that lack substantial antenna. Experience suggests maximum range of 100m - 170m outdoors and 10m - 30m indoors. This means that almost every dwelling would require a mesh node to allow connection across an urban or peri-rural setting. For rural settings Wi-Fi simply fails, regardless of the uptake because dwellings are more distant than the maximum achievable range. Therefore, the Mesh Extender incorporates a longer-range UHF packet radio (and the option to connect to a variety of external radios).

Unskilled Deployment

Another vital characteristic is to ensure that Mesh Extenders installation consists simply of turning the device on: There should be no aiming of antennae, network configuration or other skilled tasks required. This ensures that the product can be easily and effectively used by anyone who has need.

Also, aiming is impossible for a portable device is simply not possible. This is one reason why aimed long-shot Wi-Fi is not a solution.

Concept

As Wi-Fi is not a complete solution, we wish to allow the use of other radio interfaces to connect devices. Also, for nearby devices, we wish to provide a Wi-Fi Access Point, so that energy consumption of the mesh nodes can be minimised.

Thus we wish to make a small device, that is a Wi-Fi AP, and also allows the use of a variety of other radio interface to provide longer-range and more energy efficient mesh networking. The device could also offer an HTML interface to the mesh, so that devices lacking the Serval Mesh software could still participate, and potentially download the Serval Mesh software if so desired.

Prototyping Attic

The following describe other hardware platforms and development threads we have explored. See the above section for the most relevant material.